Iranian Space Agency - Launched Satellites

Launched Satellites

• On October 28, 2005, a Kosmos-3 booster rocket launched Sinah-1. The joint Iranian Russian Sinah-1 project cost 15 million U.S. dollars, and the launch made Iran the 43rd country to possess its own satellite.

• Environment 1, a joint research satellite of Iran, China and Thailand was launched on a Chinese Long March 2C carrier rocket on September 6, 2008, aimed at boosting cooperation on natural disasters such as flooding, drought, typhoon, landslide and earthquake. The twin Earth observation satellites of eight planned were launched from Taiyuan SLC. The satellites will work as a constellation with six other satellites yet to be launched. Its observational footprint is 720 km. With a lifespan of more than three years, they have state-of-the-art imaging systems and infrared cameras and provide a global scan every two days. Iran had shouldered $6.5 million dollars out of the $44 million dollars of the total project cost.

• Omid, Iran's second satellite, was placed in orbit in February 2009, and was described as a "data-processing" satellite for "research and telecommunications".

• Rasad-1 is an imaging satellite that has been built and launched successfully by Iran. The satellite was sent into the 260 kilometres orbit by a Safir rocket launcher on June 15, 2011. It beams back to earth pictures with 150-meter resolution.

• Navid-e Elm-o Sanat (also known as 'Ya Mahdi') which is an "experimental satellite" built by students for testing camera and telecommunications equipment was revealed to the public on February 3, 2010. It has store-dump capability and a resolution of 400 meters. On February 3, 2012 Iranian press reported that Iran has successfully launched its domestically-built Navid-e Elm-o Sanat satellite into orbit.